Oklahoma Prison Staffing Problems Sparks Concerns About Situation

Oklahoma prisons are severely understaffed, revealed a new report on state prison rankings this month.

The state saw the most severe understaffing of all 50 states, with almost six inmates per correctional officer in the state prisons, according to Las Vegas Personal Injury Lawyers at H&P Law.

“Jailers and correctional officers perform a vital role in society, so it is concerning to hear of their immense workload in some states,” Matthew Pfau, a partner at H&P Law, said in the report.

The report was based on 2023 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and 2022 data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Altogether, Oklahoma employed 3,910 officers for 22,941 prisoners, which put it at the worst ranking for state staffing levels.

Some of this could be attributed to Oklahoma’s salary for correctional officers, which has consistently ranked in the bottom 10 nationally. The mean wage for that job across the state was set at just $44,450 yearly.

But Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor for the University of Tennessee at Martin, said many factors are at play when it comes to prison staffing shortages, not just salary.

“When it comes to understaffing for jails and prisons, it ordinarily doesn’t involve one issue but several, and like dominoes, one triggers many others to fall over,” Beene told Newsweek.

“We’ve seen many jails and prisons get more competitive from a pay standpoint in recent years, with benefits that rival or excel their private sector counterparts. However, when employees come into many of these environments, they quickly discover how understaffed they are, and earning the same paycheck as another employer requires far more work, not to mention responsibility….”

In Oklahoma, many state prisons are routinely staffed below 50 percent of the recommended level, according to a recent report from the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency. In several cases, that might have led to some of the violence and killings of both inmates and guards in recent years.

“There appears to be a critical point where the number of (correction officers) is too low to manage the inmate population, which could result in a rise in violence,” the report said.

After Oklahoma, many southern and Midwest states likewise struggled with their staffing levels. The next most understaffed prisons were in Alabama, Idaho, Georgia, Florida and Mississippi, which saw prisoner-per-guard ratios between 4.3 and 5.87.

On the other end, some prisons saw far greater staffing levels. Massachusetts, the top-rated state, employed roughly one guard per prisoner.

New York, New Jersey and New Mexico trailed shortly after for best prison staffing in the United States.

Those states that saw some of the worst staffing levels will likely need to get their pay and workload on par with what employees are searching for, Beene said.

“At the end of the day, prisons and jails may be able to compensate more competitively, but if the workload feels too vast, employees will go elsewhere,” Beene said.

A spokesperson for H&P Law said the states that fail to get their staffing levels up could face a “precarious situation” as it concerns safety risks.

“This creates a precarious situation where safety risks increase, operational challenges arise, and financial strain mounts due to potential legal and compliance issues,” a spokesperson told Newsweek. “Addressing these staffing shortages is essential for ensuring safer and more effective correctional facilities.”